Evidence from 2022–2024 shows that the VC downturn Sacks anticipated did occur, and that investors systematically favored high‑growth, capital‑efficient startups while pulling back hardest from high‑burn, mediocre‑growth companies.

• Clear downturn in venture funding starting in 2022. Global VC funding fell ~35% in 2022 vs. 2021 and then another ~42% in 2023, reaching the lowest level in years, with deal counts also dropping sharply.(livemint.com) This created exactly the “downturn” environment the prediction was about.
• Investor criteria shifted to “efficient growth” (high growth, moderate burn). VC commentary and guidance from 2022 onward consistently emphasize capital efficiency, burn multiple, and Rule of 40 over “growth at all costs.” TechCrunch in April 2023 described a “tectonic shift,” saying capital efficiency had become the new filter and that companies bleeding cash with weak efficiency metrics would be deemed “default dead” or face sharply reduced valuations.(techcrunch.com) Other analyses and VC guides explicitly note a post‑2022 move away from rewarding pure top‑line growth toward sustainable, efficient growth and strong unit economics.(raisebetter.capital) A 2025 overview even cites David Sacks’s burn multiple as a now‑standard metric and uses Notion’s low burn multiple as a reason it could attract “massive funding rounds even in tight markets” – a direct example of high growth with moderate/efficient burn continuing to get funded.(medium.com)
• High‑burn, modest‑growth startups repeatedly failed to raise and were forced to shut down or restructure. CB Insights’ large compilation of startup failure post‑mortems documents many 2022–2023 closures where unsustainable burn plus insufficient growth meant new funding could not be raised in the tighter VC market. For example, Fast (one‑click checkout) had burn “far exceed” revenue growth; when the market turned, it couldn’t raise more capital and shut down. Rapid‑delivery and other high‑burn models similarly folded or sold in 2022 as funding tightened.(scribd.com) Broader reports on the “funding winter” note tens of thousands of startup closures in 2023, with many citing high burn, lack of clear profitability, and inability to secure follow‑on capital as key causes.(livemint.com)
• Meanwhile, selective exceptions with extreme growth still got funded, not contradicting the rule. Even within the funding winter, sectors like generative AI raised record sums while overall startup funding was down ~65% from 2021, illustrating that investors still backed very high‑growth stories, but in a far more selective way.(globaldata.com) Those winners generally also stressed efficiency and strong business metrics, consistent with the idea that “high growth + reasonable burn” remained fundable while weak or moderate growth + heavy burn became untenable.

Taken together, the data and post‑mortems show that after 2022, venture capital markets did exactly what Sacks predicted at a stylized level: during the downturn, funding concentrated in companies showing strong growth with controlled burn and solid unit economics, while many startups with only moderate growth and high burn were unable to raise, and were forced into shutdowns, fire‑sales, or drastic cost‑cutting. The prediction is therefore best characterized as right in its core claim about how funding would bifurcate during the 2022+ downturn.